i'm not a 100% sure but i think there are rats in my apt walls or at least that's my fear.during the middle of night, i hear a scratching noise on the floor. it's a constant scratching/digging sounds that only stops when i get up and walk around my apt. but even walking around only stops the noise for few minutes before it starts up again. this only happens at night so i talked with my two neighbors (one unit above and one on the left side) and neither one has pets or hears the scratching noise. i'm a light sleeper as is and this is making sleep impossible. i thought about reporting it to my super but he's so unresponsive. back in aug when i first moved into my apt, water would leaked from the bottom of my toilet when flushed and it literally took him 3 months to fix it. my lease runs until the end of july but i need sleep now.i'm not sure what to do so any help is appreciated.

Usually I would yell at them if they showed their (cute, tiny) face too early. Like if I was reading on the couch late at night, and I would see one zipping out from under the oven. A loud "HEY!" would send them scurrying for the safety of the oven with the whole cartoonish spinning legs and 180 degrees turns.

But seriously, just live traps. Then we would release them in a park pretty far from us. For rodents, they are so tiny and defenseless...

yeah, my apartment mouse didn't care a whit about my cat. i would see it darting back and forth from under the sink to her dish to steal food at night while we were in the living room, so i started bringing her food into the living room with me at the end of the day, and the mouse started coming out and standing in the middle of that room and waiting for me to throw it a treat or something. so bold. sometimes my cat seemed sort of interested in it, but she wasn't always interested enough to get up. i guess we settled into a craigslist-roommate sort of dynamic. it used our stuff, but only a little of it, and it was really quiet. we could have done worse.

_________________"rise from the ashes of douchebaggery like a fancy vegan phoenix" - amandabear"I'm pretty sure the moral of this story is: fork pants." - cq

knowing that mice can eat through walls is alarming but i take comfort in knowing that it's probably only one two.i'm going to buy some humane traps this weekend because i can't see myself using dirty bedding.any trap recommendations?

mice supposedly hate the smell of mint and cayenne pepper. So if you put down oils with these smells, it should repel them. Maybe make a home made floor cleaner with some mint oil? I read dryer sheets too, but I never tried it when I had mice because they make it hard for me to breathe, and I didn't know about the mint oil then. (Side note: works great for repelling ants)

check for any places that they can come in and stuff them with steel wool, or spray foam. in my apartment there were already huge holes under the sink that they were coming in from, and the exterminator spray-foamed them and that was that. the landlord had him put down poison too (not my idea) but that didn't work at all, I think they were immune and feeding off it. But fixing the holes worked.

And clean! make sure there isn't one microscopic crumb of food anywhere, especially under the oven, the fridge etc. and that all your food is sealed in metal / glass containers. No plastic bags or cardboard. Your goal is to make it so that they can't smell food.

And make sure there's nothing they can nest in, especially near the floor. If you store things under furniture, move those items somewhere else.

All of those tips are great if they are in your apartment but have you seen any evidence of them in your place SweetT? Look around the edges of all rooms, in cupboards and storage areas etc to see if you can find any droppings or any shredded items they have chewed. Then you'll know where to put the traps. If they are in the walls but also coming into the apartment you don't want to fill up the holes til they are gone or you'll have no way of trapping them. If they are only in the walls I'm not sure what to suggest - they must be in someone else's apartment for food so would need to be dealt with from that end. (When I had them they were nesting in my roof space but going elsewhere for food, the mice expert I had in to seal up the gaps said a younger family of mice had probably relocated from a nearby house because there were too many mice there.)

I hate to say it but even if there are just one or two now they breed like crazy so you can't be complacent about it unless you are happy to coexist with them. The other thing to bear in mind though is that when there are many more of them they will become troublesome to other people too and at that point I'm sure the landlord will be contacted and the exterminators brought in, so dealing with it early is best while there are less of them, especially if you are forced to go down a less humane route by the landlords.

I'm in the UK so you may have different options but I used Trip Traps and a bigger metal trap baited with peanut butter. You have to check the traps often especially if they are small as the mice get really stressed once caught. You need to take them some distance away before releasing them or they will find their way back. And you might want to check how easy it is to release the mice from the traps too - mine broke in half centrally but that put my hands closer to the escaping mouse than I'd have liked!

I would advise you to get several traps and set them at the same time because my mice got wise to the traps and just ignored them. When I found mice in there in the mornings there were droppings all around the traps and I wonder if the trapped mice somehow communicated to the others that they needed to keep away. After catching 10 mice in the individual traps (none in the large one) they stopped going in them although I could still see evidence that they were there. In the end they left of their own accord and I got all the holes sealed up around the exterior of the building (not to easy if it is a whole block I realise) and we haven't had any problems since.

Earplugs! It won't help remove the rats but it will help you sleep. I am a light sleeper too and use them everynight. I suggest the kind that is shaped like a smooth cylinder. They stay in so much better. If you want really good sound blockage, get the kind that is lumps of wax.

_________________lack toast intolerant: intolerant of not having toast

I saw a rat scurrying across my floor this morning... I informed the landlord and he called an exterminator, so it's too late for that one. But I was wondering whether I could have done something else. Any suggestions? Rats scare me out of my wits, so I feel pretty helpless. I never heard or saw any evidence of rats or mice before, so I don't know whether it makes sense getting a live trap when it could never happen again...

I'm happy I can use my knowledge as an inspector to weigh in on this because getting rid of rats and mice is a bit hard. You kind of need to notice the pattern of the rat/mouse before you put traps down. Look at corners/walls near sources of heat, like fridges and cabinet, cupboards and pipes for sebum markings (grease tracks) and put the trap there. If you put them in the wrong place or too early you risk them avoiding the trap or missing them entirely, then they will teach the babies to avoid them too. Also you can use really fine mesh steel wool and cement to plug up holes. Mice and rats do bite through walls as was said before, so you have to check on it every so often.

As far as I know the Mint and Cayenne lures are inconclusive. Closed many facilities that used them as pest management tools.

Make sure you keep food in vermin proof (hard plastic/metal) containers and please do not engage rats, they claw at you. Good luck, rats and mice carry salmonella and a bunch of other things so be safe.

Thanks. The exterminator found where the rat came from and the landlord will repair the hole in the building's basement. He said not to plug the hole in my appartment because it would trap the rat under my bathtub. I think I'll wait and see whether the problem persists after the repairs are done before I get a live trap.